With the advent of high technology needs and market deregulation, today's energy market has become very dynamic. High technology industries have increased their demands on the electrical power supplier, requiring more power, increased reliability and lower costs. A typical computer data center may use 100 to 300 watts of energy per square foot compared to an average of 15 watts per square foot for a typical commercial building. Further, an electrical outage, whether it is a complete loss of power or simply a drop in the delivered voltage, can cost these companies millions of dollars in down time and lost business.
In addition, deregulation of the energy industry is allowing both industrial and individual consumers the unprecedented capability to choose their supplier which is fostering a competitive supply/demand driven market in what was once a traditionally monopolistic industry.
Network communications, such as electronic mail transport protocols, are increasingly being utilized in this dynamic market, for example, to effect communications between customers and supplier or to implement monitoring or control networks. Although email offers a robust delivery of communications there is often no guarantee of the message being communicated and real time communications is not always available. Instant Messaging protocols (“IM protocols”) can also be used to transport commands or data over a network from device to another. One limitation of the IM protocols is the requirement to have an active connection to communicate between the devices. If a device only periodically connects to the network then any commands sent while the device is offline will fail due to the device not being online or no presence detected. Periodic connectivity may be handled using a store-and-forward mechanism, however, not all IM messaging systems have such a mechanism. Another limitation of most IM systems is that they do not use open source or standard protocols to communicate. In order for these IM protocols to work correctly through firewalls, changes must be made in the configuration of these intervening firewalls. In some situations the responsible entity will be unable or unwilling to make changes to the firewalls configuration for security or policy reasons. For these reasons, instant messaging is frequently specifically blocked from crossing any intervening firewalls. While many instant messaging protocols are designed to find any outgoing holes in the firewalls, many companies spend a fair amount of time disabling as many of the instant messaging protocols as possible to prevent the possibility of leaking unauthorized information into unsecured networks. A further problem is that if both IM devices are connected with secure networks, each behind a firewall, then direct communication is not possible unless one or both firewalls are specially modified to allow tunneling from external devices to the internal, protected network. The IM system must provide external servers that will proxy the IM messages in this case or communication will not be possible.
The requirements of increased demand and higher reliability are burdening an already overtaxed distribution network and forcing utilities to invest in infrastructure improvements at a time when the deregulated competitive market is forcing them to cut costs and lower prices. With these investments comes a demand for robust and reliable communications methodologies that can operate in a heterogeneous mix of secure and unsecure networks. Accordingly, there is a need for a system of transporting data between networks that operates within the restrictions created by firewalls and other network security barriers.